USADA is coming to Colorado Racing

It was announced at the Local Associations of USAC meeting last weekend that USADA is developing a testing program that will provide education and testing resources of athletes at the amateur level of cycling and that program will be coming to Colorado in 2013. The program was piloted in the Florida area already where apparent drug usage was high and so high that some could say that Florida is leading the effort to clean up amateur racing by creating their own Florida Clean Ride Fund. But even so, tempers are still high as earlier in September a race director in Florida refused WADA access to riders

When WADA drug testers showed up unannounced at the 2012-13 Florida State Championship Series last weekend, race promoter Dave Bergen refused to allow the technicians to collect samples because “he had no prior warning or notification” and he had “never seen dope testing conducted” for a local amateur event.

USADA will be showing up to at least one high profile race in 2013 according to Chris McGee. While Colorado may not be apparently as bad as Florida it has had it share of suspensions and one high profile suspension of Chuck Coyle ends this month.

We had the opportunity to meet with USADA's Andrew Morrison, Sport Testing and Resources Director, last weekend at the USA Cycling Local Association Summit in Colorado Springs. Our conversation focused on how to both educate our athletes, and how to best provide testing and deterrents to ensure that our athletes are competing on a clean, fair playing field. It is important to note that ALL athletes at USAC events are subject to both in- and out- of competition testing by USADA.

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USAC is building a Local Association Anti-Doping Program, which will coordinate efforts, help target testing by USADA, and provide funding for LAs to bring USADA presence to local events. At this time, cycling is the only Olympic sport in the USA that is working on this sort of program.

It is important to point out that this is made possible by the ACA and their new relationship with USAC

One element of this anti-doping crusade is that USADA’s ‘one-size-fits-all’ approach is antiquated and somewhat discriminatory.

Drug testing originally came into play to bust high-level amateur or professional athletes who were cheating by jacking themselves up to above and beyond what were considered normal levels of various biochemical substances occurring in the human body, whether they were naturally produced or not.

With the rapid increase of grass-roots master’s athletes and associated sporting events, we are now running into situations where many older athletes are experiencing biochemical deficiencies of various types, placing them in situations where they are forced to live with levels considered to be below normal in order to compete. As a consequence, many find themselves being prescribed banned-substance supplementation by their physicians in order for them to maintain normal levels, improve their quality of life, and as far as competition is concerned, compete on a level playing field with those athletes in their categories who do not experience such deficiencies.

Yes, there is the TUE route, but there is a very narrow window of acceptance, and many master’s athletes may suffer from such deficiencies without presenting certain symptoms or an organic etiology to justify the granting of a TUE.

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